Deputies conducted big search for 911 caller who was found slain

Nikki Franco was found dead in an Oakland Park apartment (Photo courtesy of Savana…)

June 9, 2014|By Linda Trischitta, Sun Sentinel

Thirty-two minutes. That's how long it took rescuers searching door to door in a large apartment complex to find Nicole Franco, a young woman who called 911 about a burglary in progress at her apartment.

By the time rescuers found her, the 19-year-old student was dead.

Franco gave the address at Bridgewater Place apartments to a 911 dispatcher but didn't — or couldn't — provide her unit number, authorities said.

During the middle of the night search, a deputy discovered an apartment with an open sliding glass door. Inside was Franco's lifeless body.

When deputies responding to the call for help sought a suspect's description from the dispatcher, she could only say the caller had never hung up. The line had been "left open."

Franco dialed 911 from 2800 NW 44th St. at 3:29 a.m. Tuesday.

"Deputies were dispatched immediately," said Broward sheriff's spokeswoman Dani Moschella. "At 3:36 a.m., deputies were in the apartment complex. They set up a perimeter, had the helicopter up and a K-9."

While deputies looked for evidence and called out "Broward Sheriff's Office" in the hope that residents in the complex's towers could guide them, the agency's communications staff was trying to figure out who owned the cellphone that was dialed for help, Moschella said.

At 4:08 a.m., the K-9 officer found the sliding glass door that led to Franco's ground-floor apartment was open.

"They call inside, there is no response and a sergeant finds the body of Nicole Franco," Moschella said.

There were no efforts to resuscitate her, Moschella said.

The Sheriff's Office is withholding Franco's 911 call, citing a state law that makes confidential any recording that depicts or records a killing.

Some of the 911 dispatcher's directions as deputies drove to the apartment complex can be heard on Broadcastify, a website that streams live audio for public safety and other communications.

The Sheriff's Office won't say if anything was stolen from Franco's apartment. The community is gated and has a daytime guard, the agency said.

It is not a high-crime area, but car burglaries have been reported, Moschella said.

It is unknown whether Franco knew her killer. As of Friday, detectives had not named a suspect.

Whether Franco's death was the result of a burglary gone awry, Moschella said, "It's too soon to say. We don't know the circumstances of how she was killed."

Moschella and John DeCarlo, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, both say that a random homicide is a rare occurrence.

"Murder is one of those crimes where, in the vast majority of cases, the victim knows the perpetrator," DeCarlo said. "It's not usually random."

Sometimes the connection to victim and killer can be slight.

A former Connecticut cop for 34 years who has a Ph.D., DeCarlo said one of his old cases involved an elderly woman killed during a home burglary that seemed like a random homicide to investigators, at first.

"A neighborhood kid and another kid were drug users and thought they could break in, get some stuff and leave," DeCarlo said. "But she woke up and was strangled by having a pillow put over her face. It turned out, there was a connection."

Franco, known as Nikki, was from Park Ridge, N.J. She was an aspiring baker who attended The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and made pastries at the Boca Raton Resort and Club.

Dolores Garcia, 21, of Southwest Ranches, cried while talking about her classmate and "best friend."

"She was just so happy," Garcia said.

When she and Franco's boyfriend Michael Dorfman couldn't reach her Tuesday and news reports described a killing of an unnamed woman in Franco's apartment complex, they let themselves into her apartment Tuesday night with a key Franco had shared.

They said detectives were not present at the time and there was no yellow tape sealing off the unit.

When she saw her friend's pink and black sneakers, "I just lost it," Garcia said.

Dorfman, 22, who said he studies film at the Institute and met Franco in a math class they were both struggling through, had dated Franco for "just over a month."

He said he went into her bedroom "and saw the aftermath. I won't say more."

The friends said they met with detectives at the apartment and at a sheriff's district office.

"I hope that whoever did this gets caught," said Dorfman, who also is an aspiring wrestler. "I wish I could have been there. It probably wouldn't have happened."

Franco's parents, Steven and Teri Franco, spent the days after the killing trying to take care of her belongings. They were waiting to learn more about their youngest child's death, and to see her body, Steven Franco said Friday morning.